Baro: Putin ready to use biological weapons against his own people

The poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "ready to use biological weapons against his own people to stay in power," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said today.

Baro wrote this on the X platform after the publication of a joint statement by five European countries that Navalny was poisoned with a rare, deadly neurotoxin – epibatidine, obtained from South American poison dart frogs.

The French minister paid tribute to Navalny, "an opposition figure killed for his fight for a free and democratic Russia."

The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands jointly announced today that Navalny died of poisoning in a penal colony two years ago.

The five governments said in a joint statement that their conclusion was based on analyses of samples from Navalny's body, which they claimed "convincingly confirmed" the presence of epibatidine, a toxin obtained from poisonous frogs living in South America.

Russia has therefore been reported to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, according to a statement published in London.

The Russian government has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the death of Alexei Navalny.

Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024, and his team and his wife, Yulia Navalny, accuse President Vladimir Putin of ordering the murder.

"These latest findings once again underscore the need to hold Russia accountable for its multiple violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention and, in this particular case, the Biological Weapons and Toxins Convention," the five states said in a statement, which also expressed concern that Russia had not destroyed all of its chemical weapons.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said she and Alexei Navalny's widow are working to "expose the Kremlin's barbaric plot to silence him."

"Only the Russian government had the means, motive and opportunity to use this deadly toxin against Alexei Navalny while he was imprisoned in Russia," Yvette Cooper said in a separate statement.